They are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash.

No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5.

Most technology analysts see the lack of Flash support on the iPad as a liability.

But most tech analysts thought the same thing about Apple’s decision to drop the disk drive from the iMac.

And – while Flash is notoriously absent from the iPhone – millions of users don’t seem to care.

Daring Fireballs’ John Gruber responded to the iPad Flash discussion by pointing out the logical direction ahead for developers and content publishers:

Used to be you could argue that Flash, whatever its merits, delivered content to the entire audience you cared about. That’s no longer true, and Adobe’s Flash penetration is shrinking with each iPhone OS device Apple sells.

What’s Hulu going to do? Sit there and wait? Whine about the blue boxes? Or do the practical thing and write software that delivers video to iPhone OS?

The answer is obvious. Hulu doesn’t care about what’s good for Adobe. They care about what’s good for Hulu. Hulu isn’t a Flash site, it’s a video site. Developers go where the users are.

If you’re using Flash to publish media – it’s time to look into other options.

Adobe needs to open source Flash Player code (without proprietary H.264), and hand this code to Mozilla foundation. Even though even this move has slim chance of success, this might be the only way to save Flash.

I’ve been arguing the same point on other forums. Flash is definetly on its way out. Adobe really shot themselves in the foot not throwing more resources at keeping flash up to date on every platform, 32bit and 64bit. I think this is a case of a company that is just too big to react to something as fast moving as the web.

By now I’d of expected Flash to be GPU accelerated, offer advanced scalable 3D features to make higher end gaming possible and be absolutely stable while doing it. Instead we have an addon for browsers that is years behind the competition. Giant sloths like Microsoft (with its Silverlight) ran rings around Flash by its second iteration. That’s laughable, and while Adobe might be getting nervous, it’s one of those difficult to analyze situations where you can produce graphs that show its still as relevant as ever and ignore the more subtle signs that it’s being marginalised. The real drop in support will come when HTML5 finds its feet and gets established support for all the main browsers both desktop and mobile. So I doubt Adobe will do anything until the userbase starts to drop heavily and that actually pleases me plenty.

Apple should be applauded for snubbing Flash so early. It can’t go away fast enough for me.

I’m a flash developer so surprisingly I have my doubts of flash dieing
Its true that mobile technology is become more and more mature and services, sites are more and more often accessed trough mobile devices, but the majority of users still sits in offices and nobody predicts the death of desktop computers so flash will have its grounds for a while.
IE6 is still around, so even html/css developers must consider it when creating accessible sites, so it will be a long time before the so called standards catch up with themselves. No matter what html5 can do, when you still have dinosaurs to think of. Like Hulu, they won’t drop flash, they just have to develop secondary systems.
But its true flash’s home is the desktop.

I’m also a flash developer, It is interesting to see all this fad hype about html5. As exciting as it is… I’m kind of over the ability to be able to embed video into html “Without the cross browser issue”. While we still have 30 different browsers to support, all claiming to be web standard. I’ll bask in the glory of a single swf. The future releases of flash will allow standards across the mobile platform, one build, render to desktop, online and mobile. That will be hard to beat….

Dead??? because of Apple… I say that is crap. I have an Iphone and a RIM phone. The Rim phone works. The Iphone is a piece of crap and just barely makes it useful as an actual phone. I believe the IPad will be replaced with some chinese piece that will be 1/4 the price and twice as useful. Apple didnt want flash because they would lose control of the sales of the apple apps. Its that simple. I use the Iphone now as a temperature link in the kitchen. I never use it as a phone any longer. The I pad will be just as useless. I can’t type 90 words a minute on a pad. The desktop is here to stay…. and the notion that the Ipad will be significant is a draw on the imagination. Sure some dummies will be drawn to the IPad at first but then what. I am sure most respondents here if polled to the actual capabilities of flash is would fail miserably. It is part of the church of Apple that draws people to believe there is real value in the product compared to others. I run a PC and a laptop that cost 1/2 as much as a comparable apple product,,, Adobe CS5 release is April 12 … look at the Iphone on the main menu. Apple should be scared as what will be coming is a RIM and others that are embracing Flash. and the community of programmers that will make Apple lose its control over its app sales. This is all that Apple cares about. The technology of flash never has had anything to do with Apple decision other than to protect its APP business. Wake up.

1. Flash runs a virtual machine that is very badly implemented, has a ton of memory leaks and although content does well on the desktop it’s horrible on mobile devices.
2. Most flash content was designed for large screen and mouse = absent on mobile.
3. flash is so badly implemented that it wastes CPU cycles when doing animation because the animation is based on the VM not the GPU.
4. No one should have to wait on a mobile device for flash content to load and bork their phone.
5. No one should be at the whim of Adobe’s poorly developed platform and even worse poorly designed flash content.
6. Apple is very smart in controlling the way app are deployed, only apps that profile well when running are approved. They use a lot of care when approving apps.
7. Objective-c is extremely fast and very memory efficient – what is even cooler is that apple provides Leaks – a developer tool that detects memory leaks in apps. Sorry but i used Flash and Flex and they were both ok but not nearly as fully integrated as Xcode with so may profiling applications to really help your application run smoothly and efficiently.
9. I think you will see HTML 5 come to prominence as the consortium and developers world-wide create and innovate, leaving Flash as a relic to good times.
10. Face it RIM makes crap devices old tech, obsolete features hence it’s stock price.

You can intellectualize why Apple products are not so great but this has nothing to do with it. The fact is the masses will own ipads within a short time and they won’t be thinking through the technical stuff, they will just see that some sites do not work and will move on to sites that do.

Quality of the product is not a factor. What the masses will be using is. For that reason alone i think it is safe to predict that Flash is dead.

I don’t believe Flash is going to die because of the iPad. The iPad is a niche market device. Flash does more than deliver video. I don’t see how HTML 5 is going to replace the graphics capability of Flash. There are even 3D libraries for Flash.

Flash is dead? Far from it, I love apple but please, people stop drinking the coolaid or apple juice…Flash is way more than just videos nothing against HTML5 but it (HTML5) will not come close to what Flash can do. I feel a bit betrayed by Apple, after purchasing iphones, macbook pros, imac’s and displays they’re talking crap about Flash. If I remember correctly a while back Apple was not doing so good and most of it’s support came from it’s “creative” users ie; Adobe users…

I think Adobe will come up with something smart here. Regardless of all the hype, flash is way more influential than the iPad and iPhone, it’s on so many devices that there’s no way it’ll just get forgotten. More likely, this will shake up Adobe and get them putting more resources into flash to fix the problems it has, which is a good thing.

HTML5 is never going to be a competitor with flash for anything except the most mundane of work, banner ads etc. Flash can run full, complex applications these days, and there are hundreds of supporting APIs (physics, asset loaders, app frameworks, 3D etc) that have taken many years to build up. Complex work in HTML5 will be impossible because every browser interprets things slightly differently, and there are more and more browsers out now – safari and chrome weren’t worth building for 5 years ago and now they are, and even opera just got 1 million downloads on the iPhone! Plus as soon as HTML5 tries to do stuff as complex as flash, it will require just as many system resources as the flash player anyway.

As more and more devices can browse the web, there will be a greater and greater appeal for a technology where you can build once and deploy everywhere reliably. Flash is still that technology, and there don’t seem to be any realistic alternatives to it that work with everything.

There are much better phones out there than the iPhone. If one of those brands can get themselves together enough to make a great app development framework and a good store, they have a real shot. The iPhone dev framework is extremely well thought out, and that leads to a lot of really usable applications and a great store. To me, that’s what the other brands are lacking right now.

Adobe should stop releasing Photoshop on mac. That would get things nice and heated up, haha.

I agree with Steve about Flash. It always crashes my mac. Also, recently I tested many learning management sites, and all the sites that used flash were very buggy. After a test, all the testers were glad to get back to a Skype call where we could freely talk without our computer crashing.

Besides the admittably strange approach to build voip-functionality with Flash, those website’s budgets will most certainly not have exceed that of Skype. That’s as if you were to build a selfmade doghouse, try to live in it, compare it to a skyscraper and conclude that wood can under no circumstances serve as a construction material

Uh, all the “coolest” website are in Flash. And by coolest I mean fun and entertaining. When was the last time you saw a blockbuster movie teaser website in CSS. Or a over-budgeted product release like a new pair of Nike’s using AJAX. Web standards is great for dynamic info-based sites and/or those that dump video here and there. Adobe (Macromedia) has been perfecting interactive multimedia since before there was an internet with Director 1.0. Let’s see these “standards” try to sync video (let’s throw some animated clickable vector graphics on top) with audio cue/loop points in a unique, interactive way. Not going to happen… ever…

Flash was made to fill in the gaps of the imperfect browsers of the old age such as Internet Explorer. I use my Mac and most of the times Flash crashes my browser when I want to INTERACT with the videos. If you say Flash is for creating *Interactive* content, and from my experience it crashes when you interact with it, there is not much point left in Flash hanging around for long.

I personally hated Flash for long and I am glad an influential person such as Steve Jobs is taking stabs at it so hard and with such great arguments.

This is all bollocks.
The reason Apple refuse to include Flash is because it is has programming language that allows creation of applications (i.e. Games).
As soon was Flash is made available their would be a flood of free games that bypass their appstore, hence loss of control and loss of their commission.
Get real guys, this is no “Open source” or “laziness” debate, it’s simply Steve Jobs protecting Apple income.

You know, the “Is Flash Dead” topic has been raging for around 10 years now. First it was the web purists (like that halfwit Jakob Nielsen) who consistently overlook the very obvious reality that the web is more than just an informational medium, and has a massive entertainment/rich-media side.

Then it was the open-sourcers, and new technology evangelists who proclaimed Flash “dead” because of the coming onslaught of Javascript canvas, Scalable Vector Graphics formats and (chuckle) Microsoft Silverlight.

Latest to the party are the Appletards. What these people are thinking I have no idea. From a statistical perspective they are hilarioulsy irrelevant. (Has a single one of them taken a look at the market penetration numbers of Flash vs. iPhone? It’s not even a contest. Flash is everywhere. From a statistical perspective, iPhone doesn’t simply doesn’t matter).

iPhone is *extremely important* as a landmark device that marries application point-of-purchase, with digital delivery in a closed-system environment. Apple hit it out of the ballpark with the iPhone. It’s a historic achievement, and a whole new product category.

It is not, and will never own the same level of importance as the web browser. It is proprietary, expensive and has a microscopic fraction of the permeation that web browsers (and Flash) enjoy.

And what exactly does Apple have that can compete with Flash? Web video *is* flash. (It’s certainly not that slow, bloated phenomenon known as Quicktime). Web interactivity *is* Flash.

Yes, but iPhone interactivity isn’t Flash, you say? Seriously folks, are we actually going to hold out the iPhone and the World Wide Web as comparably important platforms? Laugh?

Flash is not only not dead. It is vital. It is *the* platform for multimedia on the World Wide Web. Period. No competing platforms come close.

I think Microsoft’s poor quality browsers have a lot to do with the popularity of flash. If all browsers fully supported CSS3 and HTML5 the need for flash (in the majority of contexts) would die. There are certainly a few areas where flash will remain relevant (video chat, microphone, file uploads, animation, games), but the party is coming to an end.

Who actually likes flash sites anyway? I can’t remember ever visiting a flash site and thinking, “wow, what a great experience.” In fact, I usually rush to hit the back button before the “shockwave” file even finishes loading.

For over 10 years we have listened to you retards drivel on and on about how flash is dying or dead or will be taken out by some other technology and still yet to this day nothing has been able to come close and you think a device which has under 1% market penetration will kill Flash?

Even a retard knows that Apple doesn’t want flash because it will compete with the Apple app store. And Flash only seems to crash on Apple products. Seems like a Apple problem to me.

Flash is on EVERY device but Apple’s, but you wouldn’t know that because the Apple Juice is melting your brain cells…

Apple is not going to wipe out the little smile that experienced Flash developers have on their face, because we know that this is just an attempt to protect their business model, Apple is the new Microsoft, but it’s too late, their vision is doomed, it belongs to the past. Flash replaced Director and no other software on the market come close to it. Flash is much more than a tool for the web. Comparing Flash and HTML 5 is like to compare a fisherman with a farmer, they are not in direct competition.

“Comparing Flash and HTML5 is like to compare a fireman with a farmer”

- Maybe, but once IE9 has broad acceptance and people are coding with HTML5 for every site, why will people use Flash? For lame “band websites”…. I think not… flash will become the next “java applet” (yuck). Or maybe we’ll all want to keep flash around so we can see those annoying flash ads that take over the entire screen?

Flash ist THE TOOL for creating richmedia-web-content –> video, animation, interactivity and more.
Flash was and is peoples choice because its simply the best tool around… and it lets you do everything with it.

The comments regarding market share of iPhone/iPad versus Flash is way wrong thinking. The iPhone/iPad penetration is growing significantly and most importantly the users represent the most desirable demographics. In short, you are going to lose any argument that precludes your company not reaching these folks – especially when your boss or boss’ boss has one.

If your apps only work on desktops, then your apps are going to be shelved and you along with it. Every executive (and most professional staff) I know has a desktop, a laptop and smartphone and they are rarely at their desk. Your apps better work everywhere and work well. So even tho these devices are a small percentage now they are business critical. In a very few short years, portable devices will be THE platform. And like it or not, Apple is driving this technology, is the dominate player, and is getting more dominate. Even if Apple fades in few years, there is no turning back to a pre-iPhone/iPad era. My 3 year old granddaughter knows how to use the iPhone (calls, pictures, music – its admittedly unnerving) – anyone who thinks that is not a game changer is simply not thinking.

So instead of defending an outdated Flash technology that is relevant for an irrelevant platform and pretending that this threat to them (and you) doesn’t exist, I recommend you bang Adobe over the head with as large a club as you can muster and demand they do whatever it takes to be competitive right now (not years from now when its too late).

As a consultant, it is only prudent for me to advise clients not to use flash for new or revised web apps. Not with the current state of Flash technology and the explosive growth of hand held devices accessing business applications (planned or not it’s happening).

I don’t think Flash is *dead* by any stretch, but I can certainly see how it could be in its old age.

The relevant point isn’t about existing applications — of course developers aren’t going to port their apps to HTML5 for no good reason.

But for *new* applications … who is going to choose Flash unless their application absolutely requires its features, as compared to CSS3/HTML5? By choosing Flash you cut yourself out of the entire iphone/ipad/mobile market. Maybe not a huge share of the pie, but why do so without a very good reason?

I’d think that a huge proportion of existing Flash apps/sites are those that don’t *need* Flash, those that *could have* been written in HTML5 and other new techs. In the future, I see those new apps/sites tending to go with the other more mobile-friendly technologies.

Nate said: “all the “coolest” website are in Flash”…
Meh, the coolest websites just promote consumer products from big budget corporations. Sure, the Transformers webpage is “cool” but the movie sucked balls. I see this theme repeat itself all the time. For me web browsing is about information so the “coolness” of a web page is almost irrelevant. Flash will die a slow death.

OMG! you radical nut cases. I’m no where near knowledgeable in the grand scheme of the technological industry, but as an aspiring developer (AS3, C++, Java, & hopefully objective-C) I can’t picture desktops and laptops becoming irrelevant or outdated. I’m a fan of apples products. I find mac to be one of the most beautiful environments to do graphic design on, but I own a PC. Apple can sell a however million of their Iphone, but at the end of any day, your computer (desktop, laptop, etc) is where you are going to do you’re real work. I carry a laptop with me almost everywhere I go. It’s my baby. I have a Motorola Backflip. I can do countless things on my mobile device that I can do on my computer. But my phone will NEVER replace my computer. And, no device that doesn’t have at least a 12″ screen and a full physical keyboard is going to replace that.

Oh, let’s also consider the price. the 64GB i pad cost about $700. There are touch screen laptop that’s perform with the same functionality as the Ipad, but come with a larger harddrives, equal or greater processing, close to equal graphic, oh, and the come with a real keyboard. I’m going to choose a computer over a big device that mimics a mobile phone. Apple, I love you, but take the stick out of your a$$ and play nice!

oops, got lost in what I was saying (A.D.D for the win) those touch screens though expensive can go as low as $800-900. Flash won’t die any time soon, because the personal computer (desktop, laptop, etc) will never die.

Oh and, anyone out there developing apps on there mobile device? Or, are you developing on your Mac or PC, etc? Hate Flash all you want, it’s not going away soon. Just like you won’t be trashing your computer because you now have an iPad.

If you have used Adobe products you know that each release is never truly bug-fixed. The upgrade prices border on dishonest. The annual upgrade to it’s products usually are no more than a bug fix. I.e. Go Live was never updated properly to fix bugs and Dreamweaver is riddled with them. Instead of providing competent updates, they release a new version and burn it’s user base who only wanted a proper release to start with. As far as Flash goes, why is it that most of the worlds most important sites to not implement the Flash feature because of reliability, resource and hardware issues. I tend to agree that Adobe does not fairly upgrade its products or care for it’s installed base. Most graphics designers are sick and tired of the Adobe ideology and are going to jump ship the moment the new Apple Photoshop “killer” comes out. As time goes on, more and more people are looking to find replacements to Adobe Software ie. Final Cut put nail in Premiers coffin of obsolescence. If Adobe does not revise it’s policy of bogus upgrades, like Flash, it will become more obscured than ever. The reason Adobe thrives is the Mac Platform as competent designers only use the Mac.

Flash is still the best technology for creating complex games, RIAs, etc..
It has evolved into a robust, powerful platform.

The truth is the majority of the boobs out here dissing Flash are people who have some surface knowledge of web technology, enough to sound like they might know what they are talking about. They equate Flash exclusively with video, annoying ads and Intros. This proves they know little about the guts of what Flash does as well as the other uses for the platform.

I develop Flash based direct access trading applications, and they are quite reliable. In fact, if they crashed as often as people suggest here, I would be out of a job. I also use Macs(which I love) for my Flash development and oddly enough, Flash is only about .1% responsible for any crashes I experience.
Meaning=it hardly ever happens.

As far as HTML5, it is merely a SPECIFICATION. No more no less. What can make it a “standard” would be all the browsers implementing the spec in the exact same way. Do you honestly think this will happen?? The reality is that HTML 5 will look great on paper, with a less than stellar result where the same page/app will look and behave differently across all the browsers. This is something we already have to deal with with HTML4 and CSS3. Great, that is what we all need. More JavaScript and css hacks to address incompatibilities. While there will be some very useful aspects to HTML5, thinking it will replace Flash is a giant pipe dream.

Anyone who has experience in web design/dev will know that this is where the shoe falls off. Why do you think that open job descriptions for web developers nearly almost cite that a core requirement of the job is to be familiar with cross-browser compatibility issues?? Because it is a fact of life.
Flash doesn’t have these issues.

Look, I am not suggesting that Flash is error free, perfect or anything. Trust me, I hate pointless animated intros and obnoxious ads as much as the next guy. Again though, that is not the only thing it is used for. And like it or not, it is the closet thing to a standard the web has ever experienced. That is a fact..

As graphic designer who does web design. I work with Flash and have for quite some time now.

IMO, Flash is dead… Period.

There are many reasons why this is and it’s not just because Apple and Microsoft are backing HtML 5. Of course, I still love DreamWeaver and I hope that Adobe are able to maintain that. I’ve been using Photoshop since v1.6 and Illustrator 88. Yet, I am a huge fan of later inceptions of Acrobat, and InDesign. But, out of all the apps, Flash is also the most dysfunctional and rapidly becoming the most antiquated to work with.

Having said that, I find it funny that people can’t accept a simple statement just because it is Steve Jobs says it. In fact, if you look at most CEO’s and read the things they’ve said. Most of them have been fairly inaccurate, where as Steve has been fairly accurate with the market. Yes, the climate changes and problems occur, etc, etc. But, Steve is pretty damn good at not only has predicting certain things, but bringing newer innovations that are beyond the competitions offerings. Even other CEO’s acknowledge the fact that Steve’s shrewd, but keen eye on things. Many have lost bets betting against him. Basically, most of the time, the nay-sayers of Steve Jobs dialogue seem to come off as the most out of touch people when it comes to consumer demands or bearing new products that influence a shift in market trends.

I’m still waiting for iPod or iPhone killers… where are they? Nothing has manifested and please, don’t say Android. I will laugh out of room. The point being, Adobe’s Flash to me seems like what Quark was to Apple’s Mac OS X and Intel transitions. Then Adobe took half of Quark Xpress market into InDesign. All because Quark didn’t want to move it’s ass onto Mac OS X. If Adobe doesn’t start moving it’s ass and start embracing some new ideas for Flash. They may find themselves with a dwindling market share in that area. With all the shrewd moves that business’ make on a yearly basis, how is that impossible to see?

[BTW, remember when Adobe bitched and moaned about how Apple's Final Cut was cutting into their sales of Premiere. So, then they scrapped the whole thing and said, "No more Premiere for Mac". Only later on, they came back with a whole new version of Premiere for Mac. The point being that it may be time for Adobe to look objectively at Flash and find ways to take it into new directions before it is too late and find themselves with a fish that can't swim.]

Flash will eventually go to the wall. It will probably take years, because there is so much flash content out there (and a lot of it is classic stuff), but I have seen some HTML5 work recently that shows that it is more than just a fad. Give HTML5 a while to cook, let the dev community grow and some tools to emerge that bring in the non-programmers, and there is no doubt that it will eventually replace Flash in all future rich content projects.

Flash is far from dead, the demand for flash developers has never been higher in fact!
I agree that Flash has a bad rep thanks to crappy developers using it for ENTIRE websites.
Flash was never supposed to make full websites, merely part of a website (much like an image tag). If the ‘open web’ thinks swf files are closed, perhaps they need to take a peak at jpgs, gifs and pngs?!
HTML5 may eat into Flashs domain somewhat, but until its actually a standard and supported by more than 85%+ of browsers Im not going to even put it into the same ballpark as flash.
Apples fanboys can hype all they want, Im getting paid over $100 an hour building interactive widgets, games and interfaces and Im enjoying it :b

Finally someone with some sense.
Also, the Flash player has become far greater now with Actionscript 3, and although Steve Mobs clearly hasn’t noticed, it almost never crashes anymore! I wish the same could be said for Steve Jobs narrow minded vision of computing.
Yes hes got design down pat, but having the narcissistic pov that he is the future of computing is absolutely deluded.

Flash isn’t dead, and it won’t die for years to come. 95% of video steams are done with flash! Proving it’s alive and kicking right?

The shitty developers who use it to develop full websites need to leave it alone though. I love a good animated site, who doesn’t, however you don’t need flash to achieve this, JQuery does the job perfectly fine, if not better! and it’s fully supported by “flash’s tomb stone” as you put it

As someone who creates web projects for companies and organization, my feeling is that Flash is no longer necessary or wanted to create compelling website experiences. I never recommend it and if the client wants a slide show or transitions, JQuery is a perfectly fine alternative.

People expect information on demand and Flash is an obstacle to that information in most cases. True, Flash will not disappear but I think even movie sites or other websites which attract users willing to be entertained realize that the market for such experiences is becoming increasingly limited as more and more PCs and laptops give way to smartphones. Just sayin.’

The tablet-optimized Metro version of Internet Explorer 10 in Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 will be a “plug-in free experience,” as the company follows Apple’s lead in abandoning Adobe Flash in favor of HTML5 on tablets.

Microsoft revealed Wednesday on its Building Windows 8 blog that the Metro version of IE10 will drop plug-ins because the experience that they provide is “not a good match with Metro style browsing and the modern HTML5 web.” The company will, however, continue to support Adobe Flash and other plug-ins on the desktop version of Internet Explorer 10.

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